Anima Weapons

[Zophar]

Here's the thing.... effort vs reward has absolutely ZIP to do with whether or not an item is considered mandatory or not. The fact is, the effort vs reward on this is skewed, by alot. Not just a little. Yes, it is currently the best you can get (or one of the best? Not sure as I'm still rocking my 180s). But the sheer amount of time required to complete this is astronomically higher than any other means of attaining a similar weapon. And that isn't even taking into consideration the cost. There's grinding, and there's this. It needs to be adjusted. It can STILL be difficult, time consuming, expensive and grindy without requiring 400 dungeon runs.

I think you are sorely underestimating the time and difficulty of beating AS4, let alone having it on farm status. How many people have you met that have downed it? I think the difficulty of obtaining a 210 Gordian/Eso weapon is well balanced with the time and effort required to finish a Anima.

[Erudito]

Step one, the new "atma" crystals: I am not bothered too much by this one after taking a look at the drop rate. It can be skipped by trading in a Zeta, so there is also that. It will simply take time to complete, but that's about it. Doesn't bother me much, but it really bothered many people.

Step two, dungeons: I like this one, its actually fun to undersize the old dungeons and new dungeons aren't that terrible so its not a bad step. Again, it will just take time. Pray you don't get brain dead people on DF and kidnap a friend for extra fun.

Step three, item hell: Let me really take a good look at this... OK, so its a really long grind for items. There are lots of ways to go about it? Nice gesture, split the process across the board and you will be done after a time. It will still take a really long time, perhaps more time that what we are all willing to give. Not the smartest of moves.

But... wait, what is that?! They want 1-star HQ specialist items that require other specialist items as components? And 4 of them per set? Oh boy, that was not a smart move. The relic weapon is supposed to be the weapon casuals that don't raid shoot for, right? Its supposed to be a weapon you "buy" with time. If you are not a high end crafter then you have to get these items with money. You can bet the items are going to be ridiculously expensive for weeks (maybe months depending on server), effectively walling casuals of their relic.

Just my view of the subject anyway. Not the smartest way to start the relic quest line. I just hope that, since we are doing these things now we don't have to suffer from anything like this again during the new relic quest line.

[fm_fenrir]

(My first post)
Ffxi at its finest time took 2 real life years to complete the relics.

Not even remotely comparable. Relics in XI were The Weapon, if you spent the time to get one you were set for literally years. You'll be replacing your 210 anima weapon in the next raid tier, like you did with your novus.

[Nova_Dresden]

If you aren't planning on seriously doing endgame, there is no reason, at all, beyond pure ego that a person needs a 210 weapon.

If you want to get technical you can't acquire a 210 weapon until you beat end game, so it's not even required for that. And if 2.x is a benchmark weapons were the choke point on your item level and were not easily upgraded unless you did the relic quest. Relics aren't supposed to be what you think they are. They are equivalent weapons that can be acquired by non-raiders. And people constantly going to the argument of "you don't need it if you don't raid" completely invalidates the entire mechanism of this game and can/will drive players away from this game. It sounds good to you, but trust me you do not want a dead game. This quest is unacceptable busy work to use old content rather than devote resources to creating something new, and it should not be defended unless this is what you want patch after patch.

i really don't understand the level of complaints over the new relic weapon quests

i mean comparing the Anima Weapon (FFXIV) to the Aeonic weapon (FFXI) quest line

People need to stop bringing up FFXI. Relic weapons and other weapons like them were a P.I.T.A. to get......but they lasted FOREVER. Gear in a vertical progression MMO has a shelf life of maybe 3-5 months. These two games can't even be compared accurately. If you can compare this game to another game WoW is as close as it gets.

to get the weapon you would need 8 pages which means 8 weeks of farming which means 2 months, and this weapon will take about the same time to get sooo you want something thats good you gotta work for it equally as everyone else dont expect to get everything handed out to you just cause, imo this is not that bad.

Except that those two methods of obtaining a weapon aren't remotely equivalent. It might take ~2 months of killing A4s to get a gobdip or the gordian weapon, but the content to acquire either of those is one-and-done. Every week it resets, and you go kill it and then you're done until the next week. The relic weapon requires day in, day out, all day, every day farming of old content to get the items. And even if I dump that much time into farming content and getting all of the non-tradeable items I still have to deal with buying the remaining items from the market board and that's the crux of why this is bad. I know a lot of players who never have more than like 800k gil on them at any time and just one of these items now are floating between 1M and 4M gil, and they're not things you can craft yourself. They're specialist recipe items made with other specialist recipe items and you can only have 3 specializations. This will not end well and the prices won't go down far enough for far more than 2 months. It would probably also be cheaper to just buy an A4S clear to get a 210 weapon.

until yesterday i had no real objective to playing this game, now i do!! (i'm doing the Crystal grind even though i can skip it)

I feel you there. I never really considered quitting until I hit step 3 of the relic on Wednesday.

[TatoRazzino]

People talk about the crafting part of the quest as if it was absolutely impossible for a player to level up a crafter to craft the items. It's not, and you can do it very fast if you're willing to do it. You can't have all specialists, but that's true for everyone and a lot of people are willing to trade. I saw a crafter on PF today in my server and he was asking to trade crafted items with other crafter to complete his relic. Not hard at all. If a player is not willing to do that, just do what you're supposed to do in a game like FF XIV: make friends, join linkshells and a free company. Done. There are several players that are willing to craft those items for a reasonable price if you provide the mats. Leveling up a gatherer to 60 doesn't take longer than a week. Yes, a week. I've done it myself. So any casual player should be able to do it to gather whatever is needed for the relic, and to be honest the items are not high tier and shouldn't require any melded gear. You can do it with Red Scrips, which are fairly easy to get.
The relic is not supposed to be given for free and it should require work. It will only take longer than a month to casually grind it (hardcores can do all the steps in a week, since the Alexander grind part is as fast as light farming with an average PF group), so there's absolutely no reason to complain. And yes, SE should make players do old content, otherwise new players won't have anyone to do content with. Try playing WoW or FF XI (and yes, I'll compare) and you'll see what I mean. In FF XI, you basically won't stumble on any players in the starter areas and playing it can feel very lonely. I started meeting people in FF XI when I managed to get to Jeuno, and that was it. There was no one to play with, because all the areas suited to a starting player don't give anything good to a veteran player. I depended on Trust NPCs to level up.
Unless the developers force us to play with new people, most of us won't and their experience will be crap. You guys think that this grind will drag people away from the game, but it's quite the opposite: it prevents people from buying FF XIV and then quitting after their first month expires. If an easy grind like this one is scaring you guys, I can't imagine how you would play old school games like Ragnarok Online. You'd give up in a week.

[Sareal]

Not hard at all.

I'm pretty sure that nobody is really arguing that getting the crafted items is hard. It's time consuming? Yes. It will keep us busy? Yes. It's annoying? Yes. You can have your opinion that the crafting part is fine, but I personally do not agree with this direction. I would rather farm more dungeons or do more fates. Hell, I would settle with RNG, and I hate RNG with a passion. But crafting? If it really is their only way to bring crafting in the spotlight, they need to rehaul the entire base upon which they started building the expansion from.

so there's absolutely no reason to complain.

There is ALWAYS a reason to complain. Everybody plays and pays for this game, we all have our right to express our opinion.

[Ageofwar]

A wall of text

you my dear sir need to do a little research

for starters I'm not comparing to relic weapons i'm comparing to Aeonic weapons (while it is in the same class as relic weapons)

the Aeonic weapons quests have ONLY JUST COME OUT as of the last patch to FFXI and due to FFXI getting NO NEW CONTENT the weapon is pretty much useless right out the box but has an even worse grind than Anima weapons

at least Anima weapon have 1 month life to them.

so in short I feel my example holds up

[Nova_Dresden]

the Aeonic weapons quests have ONLY JUST COME OUT as of the last patch to FFXI and due to FFXI getting NO NEW CONTENT the weapon is pretty much useless right out the box but has an even worse grind than Anima weapons

No. The weapon just came out and so did the final patch, so the weapon literally will last for the rest of the game until the servers shut down. Something like that should have a grind. This weapon will last at most 2 or so months before it gets replaced or the next quest for this comes along and another horrible grind is tacked on top to get to the next phase.

[Raxiaz]

The relic is supposed to be grindy and hard to get. If you're a casual player, the i200 is more than enough, or even the Thordan weapon. If you want a i210 weapon, work for it. People who bitch about grinding things have never played MMOs in their lives. Grinding is a part of any MMO.

And you know what? I'm starting to think those people who have never played an MMO in their lives are better off doing so. The grind isn't fun, and it never was fun. It's simply a lazy way for the devs to keep subs by making arbitrary gates.

[Nyghtmarerobu]

I know alot of people have been complaining about bad choices and poor design on the devs, and I'll say that the quest line was very lazy and lackluster. But on the flip side, they may have done some things right.

The crystal grind was not something new to us, a lot of us have done this before, and good on you if you got to skip this step. While some are okay with it, others hate it. But what if it was done on purpose and not just to recycle content, but to maybe actually get people out of idyllshire and their housing district and make the zones come alive with players to help newer players level? Maybe this was their plan, much like 2.0 atma. Newer players flooded into the game due to its launch on the PS4 at the same time.

Dungeoun step is very easy, and like other people have said, its fun to blaze through the older dungeouns in unsynched parties. The newer dungeouns are a bit longer, but like I said previously, maybe this was the plan all along. Get an influx of people into these early dungeouns to curb some of the long que times to help others level.

The last step is where it gets tricky. Its quite a doosey, and will take quite some time for people to complete. On the surface it looks like a lot to do all at once, but in fact, like others have said, there are many ways to get the items you need. Law, Poetics, Alex normal tokens, Treasure Maps, Beast Tribe quests, old hunt marks. While some people don't see this as an ease on the system itself, it is refreshing to have all of these avenues to get tokens. If you get bored doing one thing, you can go on to another. Don't want to run alex normal anymore? Go hunting! This quest might be more of the same song and dance, but it was designed in such a way, that its only as grindy or as annoying as you make it.

As for crafting items needed? This isn't the first time this has happened. But in a previous step it also threw in a brand new thing at the same time, much like the specialty system. Previously, it was desynthing. It was kind of their way of shoe-horning it in, and trying to make it relevant, cause who was actually really looking forward to leveling it when it came out? Same thing with specialtists. It isn't needed by crafters to do the already exsisting recipies, but its forcing them to do something they may or may not have done already to help with your or their own relics.

In conclusion, like many have said in this thread, this quest chain is completely optional. Its not something you have to do. You have to want to do it. It is lackluster, and void of any real challenge, and could use some fresh content to spice it up, but for reasons unknown, we didn't get it and it was put out. Is it bad? I don't think so. It does what it needs to do, and thats fill the void of playtime people that are logging in might have. Thats not to say that it doesn't need improvement, and hopefully we will see something with future patchs, but we just have to take what we have atm. If its not your thing, you can opt out of doing it totally. All you can do is voice your opinion on what you would like to see changed, and hopefully they will see what is being said.

TL : DR - The quests aren't as bad as you think they are. They require quite a bit of time, and might be the same old song and dance, but maybe, just maybe, the devs designed it this way with other motives in mind. Only they know the truth. If you don't like it, the whole thing is optional, and I suggest leaving it alone if you don't enjoy doing it. (sorry for any grammar errors lol)